Who Does Mo Ansar Think He Is?

Update 15/05/14: It seems time has truly been called on Mo Ansar’s ‘career’. Numerous sources have now compiled articles exposing his deception. Please see the appendix at the bottom of this post for a collection & the #MoCV Hashtag I created.

“Picture all experts as if they were mammals” – Christopher Hitchens

I’ve always liked these words of wisdom from Hitch, but I’ve found them particularly resonant over the last few years. Social media has, for better or worse, afforded everyone a soap box of sorts. A digital arena where ideas can be propagated or challenged. It’s also equipped us common-folk with a direct line of access to so-called ‘Public Figures’.

Don’t like their opinions? Well, now we can let them know without so much as a postage stamp.
The ‘Public figures’ I’m referring to in this instance are those frequently wheeled out onto our telly screens for topical news segments. They confidently share their ‘valuable’ insight into “escalating tensions…” concerning some such thing or other, or press the “importance of tolerance…” etc etc. Sometimes they inform us with authority that “Men are raised to hate women”. You know the sort.

They know what they are talking about. Of course they do. They’re on our telly screen after all.
This brings me to my fascination with Mo Ansar. And it is truly a fascination. The mystery surrounding the existence of his UK media profile brings me such joyous puzzlement I want to embrace and squeeze him.

In this fantasy embrace of mine, I wait for my moment, then jab the switch at the base of his neck, exposing him for the Parody-Clown Bot he surely must be. Probably a mark II, they were never updated with the ‘Self-Awareness Patch’. #RoboMo

Of course, there will be those of you that are unfamiliar with Mo. Normally I would bring you up to speed on who he is, and what he does, but unfortunately, I haven’t a clue either. He’s seemingly a man without credentials and nothing of substance to say. Which is fortunate, since he also speaks for no-one.

Now, none of this is particularly problematic so long as no-one is taking notice of him.

We have a problem, then, it seems.

Mo can be seen and heard regularly across our TV screens, radio waves and in print, touted as the face of “Moderate British Islam”. In fact, if one were to surmise Mo’s greatest asset in a single word, it would be: “availability”.

Mo likes to refer to himself, amongst many other things, as an Educator, a Social and Political Commentator, Lecturer, LGBT Rights Campaigner and Theologian. The list goes on. I imagine it depends on his current mood and character limit. What connects all these declarations of status however is the complete lack of credentials to support them. ‘Lawyer’ is just another of these many baseless self-appointed titles. Someone took the opportunity to question him about that one on Twitter:

Right. He’s sorry. It seems we had the wrong impression. Fair enough. How on earth did we get that impression though? Maybe, just maybe, it’s because he repeatedly refers to himself as a lawyer:

These claims have had to be captured and logged on en.anarchopedia.org/ due to the majority of them being deleted. Whether he has done this post-exposure, it is unclear.

But what of the man? Is he a moderate? Does he have anything useful to say? His failure to find the minimal moral clarity required to condemn removal of appendages in an Islamic State strongly suggests to me, otherwise. You can see Maajid Nawaz taking him to task on the issue below. Maajid, incidentally is a moderate Muslim voice I would like to hear more from:

Anarchopedia have compiled an exhaustive wiki style list (down at time of writing) of Mo’s deception and less than moderate viewpoints. Take a look at this information and allow your mind to paint a picture of the man our news organisations have on speed dial when they need a trustworthy ‘Moderate’ Muslim voice.

The always on form Douglas Murray took to his spectator blog recently to highlight Mo’s anti-free speech attitudes. Moderate? Progressive? I think not. ‘Enemy of free speech’ seems more fitting. If you’re reading this Mo, your legal team can contact me via the tab at the top of this blog.

So, is Mo qualified to speak with such authority about huge issues on our national media platforms? Absolutely not. Qualifications aside, are his views even conducive to the topics? Definitely not. Will he be invited back to grace our telly screens, radio and newspapers again in the near future? You can bank on it.

The lesson here? As Hitch pointed out, ‘experts’ are simply mammals. And like many mammals, they may not have a clue what they are talking about, yet inexplicably find themselves under the glare of studio lights. Mo seems to be the rare deer that profits from this scenario. Let’s hope our media organisations wise-up to the illusion of credibility Mo has conjured from thin air. One can then only hope his phone stops ringing, the emails cease to arrive and he is compelled to actually ‘do’ something for a living.

GS

Appendix:

With Mo seemingly adding any position he fancied to his ‘credentials’ I encouraged people to play along under the hashtag ‘#MoCV’ . This picked up a lot of attention and even featured in one UK Newspaper Article: